Burn Mother Burn!
Where there is smoke there is fire. Where there is fire, there is heat, where there is heat there is... well, I think you get the picture.
Ideas are like fire. They need a spark to ignite them, and once they do they can spread like wildfire.
In the corporate world what drives an idea from spark phase to full blown inferno is called marketing.
Greg Steilstra's "pyroMarketing" strategy to promote the Christian book "Purpose Driven Life" is a unique example of this. Unique because apparently this book I have never heard of before (come on, be honest, neither did you) is the single most successfull non-fiction hardcover book ever sold in America with nearly 30 million units moved.
By creating an "interconnected social network" of people likely to purchase the book. These are people with similar common bonds.
The Internet has a similar effect as pyroMarketing. Viral emails and web tactics have a similar firestarting capability.
As Malcolm Gladwell discusses in The Tipping Point, this is also how innovative ideas are created. Through an interconnected web of social networking, people create a word of mouth campaign that when put in the hands of certain people, "connectors" and "mavens" can allow that idea to spread like a virus.
Mass media simply cannot produce this effect, it cannot target these people nor can it build such an interconnected network.
Ideas are like fire. They need a spark to ignite them, and once they do they can spread like wildfire.
In the corporate world what drives an idea from spark phase to full blown inferno is called marketing.
Greg Steilstra's "pyroMarketing" strategy to promote the Christian book "Purpose Driven Life" is a unique example of this. Unique because apparently this book I have never heard of before (come on, be honest, neither did you) is the single most successfull non-fiction hardcover book ever sold in America with nearly 30 million units moved.
By creating an "interconnected social network" of people likely to purchase the book. These are people with similar common bonds.
The Internet has a similar effect as pyroMarketing. Viral emails and web tactics have a similar firestarting capability.
As Malcolm Gladwell discusses in The Tipping Point, this is also how innovative ideas are created. Through an interconnected web of social networking, people create a word of mouth campaign that when put in the hands of certain people, "connectors" and "mavens" can allow that idea to spread like a virus.
Mass media simply cannot produce this effect, it cannot target these people nor can it build such an interconnected network.
3 Comments:
Though I agree with you in some ways, it is important to note that many trends and products become popular without strategic marketing. Take for example Lance Armstrong's yellow bracelets; what started as a charity attempt turned into a major fad, not because of a marketing technique, but because they became "cool." Another good example are the Harry Potter books. They didn't become popular because the publisher launched an amazing marketing campaign, they became popular because of the power of word-of-mouth.
One more point: earned media is not planned marketing or budgeted for but has been the reason for many, many campaigns' and products' success.
By Outside Damage, at 9:19 PM
But that type of word of mouth is exactly what we are talking about. No product or movie is created without some sort of strategy to promote it.
Of course, it may take on a life of it's own and become more successful than you could ever imagine or have the unintended consequence of becoming a fad, the way the Live Strong thing did, but there is no doubt that they were marketed initially to a specific group with the hopes of sparking a viral movement...that is how charities make their money and it is indeed part of a strategy.
By Damien, at 12:09 AM
I was surprised to read of the marketing technique used to promote "The Purpose Driven Life," (and yes, I was horrified at the ethics involved.) But I had thought it came to fame when that woman helped catch a killer by reading it to him. I guess that was later.
By Shadow, at 11:13 AM
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